


breathe like a wheel (never stopping)

by whiplash



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ward doesn't want a hug, Ward needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 20:14:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12116388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiplash/pseuds/whiplash
Summary: In which Ward deals with the aftermath of the past thirteen years. (And also doesn't take Danny Rand's shitty advice.)





	breathe like a wheel (never stopping)

_“Who will I blame for my failures, my weaknesses, my unhappiness?”_

With the press of a button, Harold’s body turns from flesh, bone and evil into smoke and ash. Ward stares into the dancing flames and braces himself for a wave of relief, only… it never comes. He’s still bracing himself – a lungful of air stuck just behind his breastbone, and all his muscles tensing as if expecting one last blow – when Danny wraps himself around him. He manages to smell, somehow, of both inner-city stink and fresh mountain air, and the weedy little shit is a hell of a lot stronger than he looks. Ward stands frozen as Danny hugs him, arms hanging uselessly by his side and his heart beating a staccato rhythm against his ribs. 

“The breath’s like a wheel,” Danny tells him, his voice much too close for comfort and the tone of it caught somewhere between pompous and solicitous. “It should never _stop_.” 

Like most things out of that madman’s mouth, it’s the worst kind of Yoda bullshit. 

But even so, Ward exhales, long and slow. _Not_ because Danny Rand just told him to though. That would be insane, and Ward’s done with insanity; he’s left insanity well behind him, he’s sweated and bled the last remains of it into his hospital bed as he struggled against the straps holding him down. No, Ward takes a deep breath just so that he can find it within himself to shrug away the other man’s arms and step out of the circle of the hug. 

(And if Ward’s chest feels all the better over the next few shuddering breaths, if the pressure inside of him eases just a fraction, then that’s not something that he has to acknowledge just here and now, in this place where his father’s body burns just a few feet away while Danny watches him with bright eyes which see everything and yet understand nothing and Jeri watches him with eyes that see everything and forget nothing.) 

Ward glances over his shoulder one last time, back to where the fire’s still raging, and then strides towards the door. He holds it open for Jeri, who offers him a thin smile before sliding past him. Danny follows, his feet quiet against the hard floor. 

The door clicks shut behind them and that's that. The end of Harold Meachum. 

xxx 

A few days later – with Danny gone, and Joy still not answering his calls – Ward finds himself staring at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. At the four-inch-wide contusions around his wrists and ankles. At the bruises, fading now to yellow and green, in the shape of Harold’s fists. At the shallow cuts from broken glass and the scrapes from twisted metal. His body’s a roadmap, telling stories that his mouth can’t seem to put words to. 

A few strands of wet hair fall into his face and he brushes them back, grimacing as his fingers brush across the swollen lump left behind by Harold’s golf club. The CT scan had cleared him of any serious injury, but his head still aches and his concentration and memory keep playing tricks on him. Post-concussion syndrome, his doctor had diagnosed, mentioning in passing that anxiety and insomnia were other common symptoms. Ward had laughed then, the sound loud and abrupt and maybe a little bit hysterical. 

He doesn’t laugh now, as he stares at his ill-used body and tries to remember the last time that he didn’t have to hide his bruises behind expensive suits. 

xxx 

Ward has always been a poor sleeper. 

As an infant, he had cried and fussed his way through naptime, and as a toddler he’d been plagued by night terrors. He vaguely remembers being afraid of the dark as a child, wishing for a night light but already conscious of the fact that his father would never approve. Ward’s not afraid of the dark anymore – his monsters come with faces and names now, and there’s no night light in the world that’ll keep him safe from them – but sleep remains an elusive luxury. 

Most nights, he lay awake, staring up at the ceiling, wishing for impossible things as the seconds tick by and stretch into hours, the dark giving way to dawn. Other nights exhaustion claims him, and he falls headfirst into something which seems more like unconsciousness than slumber. Once in a while, he wakes panting, bile splattering against the back of his throat as he does his best not to remember just what had woken him. 

Each and every morning he gets up, bones creaking and back crackling as he drinks his first cup of coffee. There’s not a part of him that doesn’t ache, and, over endless cups of bitter espresso, Ward reflects that he has an old man’s body now, for all that he’s not half-way through his thirties. 

xxx 

As the days pass, turning into weeks and months, Ward gets better and better at hiding his damage. 

That said, he still startles at certain noises. Cars backfiring. Glass breaking. Men shouting. On bad days, even the persistent trilling of his phone. He wrestles the reaction down from violent flinches to just heart palpations, stomach somersaults and sweaty palms. In another life, maybe he’d feel proud of that but as is he just grits his teeth, takes a deep breath and pushes forward. 

He has a business to run. A legacy to keep alive, not just for himself but for Joy _(and Danny)_ too. 

xxx 

“Thirteen years is a long time to be haunted by a dead man,” Jeri tells him. 

The way that she says it makes the sentence a statement of fact rather than an expression of sympathy. But on the other hand, she has come to find Ward after he’s hidden himself away in the corner of a balcony. Inside, men in expensive suits and women in sleek dresses continue to mingle, the sound of polite laughter and pleasant chit-chat drifting in through the half-open door. 

Out of relex, Ward accepts the drink that she hands him. It’s whiskey, and he’s tempted to throw it back all at once. He would welcome the burn almost as much as he would the rush, not to mention the hope of dulling the constant roar inside his head. But instead, he just holds the glass in his hand, exhaling slowly – _like a wheel, never stopping_ – and inhaling even slower. 

“Heard anything from Danny?” Jeri asks, and he blinks, refocusing on the lawyer. She frowns as he shakes his head, her lips thinning and her eyes narrowing like he’s somehow given her the wrong answer. When she smiles, it's with way too many teeth showing. “And how’s your sister?” 

Still gone, he thinks. Still missing. _(Still missed.)_

Out loud, he makes his apologies. On the way out, he pours his drink into a flower pot, and feels at the same time worse and better for it. When he comes home, he stares out through his window, stares out at a city that never did him any favours, at a city that’s nothing but noise and light and failure, and it hits him that there’s nothing keeping him there. His father’s finally both dead and gone. Joy doesn’t need him anymore. The company, well, it doesn’t need him in New York. Not full time, anyway. 

xxx 

On the plane, Ward happily turns off his cell phone. He doesn’t order a drink. 

When the engines start he leans back into his seat and he closes his eyes and he takes a deep breath, followed by another. Like a motherfucking wheel, he thinks, and it’s like something deep inside of him begins to unknot. The wheels lift and they’re off the ground, getting closer and closer to the sky for each second. 

Soon they’ll be _soaring_.


End file.
